Word: trees
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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About 600 years old and 50 ft. high, the great tree, with its 52 1/2-in. girth and 127-ft. limb spread, has inspired an outpouring of sympathy. Well- wishers stand vigil, send get-well cards, flowers, candles, even cans of chicken soup with anguished messages: "Please...
Analyzing tree-ring data from 5,000-year-old living bristlecone pines and even older dead ones, Eddy reported in 1976 that their carbon-14 content seemed to vary in rhythm with sunspot numbers. When sunspots were rare, as they were during the Maunder minimum, the amount of carbon 14 in the tree rings increased markedly; when they were numerous, the amount decreased. The explanation: during the sun's more active periods, its magnetic field, which ordinarily deflects some cosmic rays away from the earth, expands and becomes an even greater barrier to the rays. As a result, less carbon...
...Eddy's tree-ring data revealed other 50-to-100-year intervals in the past when carbon-14 production was high and the sun apparently quiescent. But did this mean that all of these periods were times of extreme cold? Many scientists doubted it, suggesting that the correlation between the Maunder minimum and the little ice age might be nothing more than sheer coincidence. Changes in solar cyclic activity, the doubters argued, were not necessarily accompanied by variations in the sun's output of heat and light and probably did not affect terrestrial weather and climate...
...much remembering. In Funes, the Memorious, Jorge Luis Borges tells the story of a man who suddenly gains the ability to remember every iota of information he has ever apprehended. Every vein of every leaf of every tree, every formation of every cloud in every sky at every instant of his life he sees. An avalanche of knowing renders him inaccessible, mystical and finally defeated. Funes dies young. No mind can apprehend God's work, or man's, in all its detail and survive. Forgetting, for men as for nations, is a biological necessity, like sleep, a respite from consciousness...
Nakashima's bench mark is the wood itself: form follows grain. He has gathered an extensive collection of lumber that includes slabs of Carpathian elm, Oregon myrtle and French olive ash. Nakashima says, "I'm something of a Druid," and he sallies into the woods to check promising trees himself. "I use logs that would be almost useless to commercial furniture makers, with their concern for regular grain and thin veneers," he adds. "If a tree has had a joyful life it produces a beautiful grain. Other trees have lived unhappily -- bad weather or a terrible location. We use both...